Doom I & II; and Quake I & II: How do I play on an iMac? (Steam or not Steam)

[evertdev]

I first palyed Doom I in 1996 and then progressed along Doom II, Quake I and finally, to Quake II.

In 2011 I bought an iMac and have not played any of these four classics since. Put simply, I miss them. I play other games on steam but still hanker back to the excellence of these FPS's. When I look for Mac compatible games on Steam these historical games never show up. Is there any way I can play them again on my current setup either within Steam or even outside of Steam?

[JLaw]

If you have a fairly recent version of OS X running on that, you should be able to get going.

For Quake (1), you just need the pak0.pak and pak1.pak data files from what Steam provides (or from any other installation of the game), and then download an OS X compatible "Quake engine" to run the game. If you're mainly interested in singleplayer, then QuakeSpasm or DarkPlaces should work for you. There are good options for multiplayer too (and other singleplayer options); you can see some info about that in this guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=118401000

I can't give you quite as much information for the other games you mentioned, but the general approach is going to be the same: get the data files for the game, and then use those data files with a free "engine" or "source port" program. For example Doom 1/2 could be handled with GZDoom for OS X http://alexey-lysiuk.github.io/gzdoom/ and I'm sure there are things you could find for Quake 2, like OS X versions of KMQuake II or Yamagi Quake II, but I'm not sure what the current hotness is.

[MrMangoHands]

I highly recommend you use zdoom (software rendering) for vanilla doom 1 and 2 with vertical look disabled, alternatively for brutal doom I'd use GZDoom and you must have vertical look enabled. For quake 1 darkplaces works though I've had issues with some levels being impassable due to keys dissapearing. Quakespasm is also a good option. For quake 2 as stated either kmquake II or yamagi quake.

[evertdev]

Guys thanks very much for your responses. My iOS is right up to date. I'm a user rather than a techno-geek, so unfamiliar with transferring game data files (the pak0.pak & pak1.pak) you mention, but will have a look at the link provided and the other sources of information. Mostly Vanilla for me although I have an unplayed DarkPlaces CD from several years back, so will have a look at the file structure on that. It doesn't open on my iMac so will have to fire up the very old PC (if it still will) and see if I can locate the files throught that, copy/transfer to a pendrive and see if I can plant them somewhere easily locatable on the iMac, perhaps in a new Applications/Games/Quake folder (?) Once again many thanks for your responses.

[JLaw]

Good luck! :-)

Messing about with Quake engines can require a little bit of ramp-up with unfamiliar terminology and stuff, in a way that is not always super user-friendly. It's a lot better now than it used to be though!

Hopefully you can manage to get pak0.pak and pak1.pak from an existing Quake CD or somewhere.

For QuakeSpasm, you can download a version based on the SDL2 library from http://sourceforge.net/projects/quakespasm/files/Mac/QuakeSpasm-0.90.0-osx-SDL2.zip/download

If that doesn't work, alternately you could try this version: http://sourceforge.net/projects/quakespasm/files/Mac/QuakeSpasm-0.90.0-osx.zip/download

Or for DarkPlaces the latest stable OS X build is at http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/files/darkplacesengine20140513.zip

Note that the DarkPlaces download also includes a lot of Windows and Linux stuff; you don't need any of that on OS X. All you need is the DarkPlaces app. The QuakeSpasm download comes with the QuakeSpasm app and an optional quakespasm.pak file (see the Quakespasm.txt readme for details about what that has in it); you can keep quakespasm.pak right next to the QuakeSpasm app.

I haven't tried to run Quake on OS X in a while, but if you have issues let us know and we'll see if we can work them out. I think that, at least for these two engines above, you manage it the same way as on Windows:

- Create a folder named "id1", within the same folder that contains the QuakeSpasm or DarkPlaces app.
- Put the pak files inside the "id1" folder.
- Now you can run the QuakeSpasm or DarkPlaces app.

If this turns out to be the case, then what I would probably recommend on OS X would be to create a "Quake" folder somewhere -- maybe inside the "Applications" folder, but just wherever you want to stash your Quake stuff. You can put the "id1" folder inside of the "Quake" folder, and also put your Quake engine app(s) inside the "Quake" folder.

If you want to experiment with mods or missionpacks in the future, then their folders would also go into that "Quake" folder, right next to "id1" and your Quake apps.